ADDcnnvLmflTfl
E V I L L
1905-1972
B orn in Barbados, West In-
dies, Neville was the fourth
son in a family of nine boys and
one girl. At age seventeen, he came to the United States to study
drama. In 1932 he gave up the theater entirely to devote
his attention to his studies in mysticism. He began his lecture career
in New York City, and travelled throughout the country,
eventually establishing his home in Los Angeles. In the late
1950's he gave a series of talks on television, and for
many years he lectured regularly, to capacity audiences,
at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.
His ten books, written over a period of some thirty
years, deal with crea-
tive visualization and
the transformation of
consciousness.
DeVorss Publications
SPIRITUAL / NEW THOUGHT
S9.95US* Price higher in other countries
www.devorss.com
P uoi xv u ! Cve lju t Q3U3>pe /^v "a ~v \ m
NEVILLE
awakened
imagination
STACK
BF
639
. GI525
1990
Includes THE SEARCH
AWAKENED
IMAGINATION
THE
SEARCH
Also by Neville
and published by De Vorss & Co.
Your Faith Is Your Fortune
Resurrection
(Including Prayer: the Art of
Believing • Feeling Is
the Secret • Freedom
for All • Out of This
World • Resurrection)
The Power of Awareness
(New edition incorporating Neville’s
textual additions)
Seedtime and Harvest
The Law and the Promise
AWAKENED
IMAGINATION
The Power which makes the
achievement of aims . . . the
attainment of desires . . .
inevitable.
THE
SEARCH
NEVILLE
m DEVORSS Publications
Awakened Imagination
Copyright © 1954 by Neville
The Search
Copyright © 1946 by Neville
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief
passages for review purposes.
ISBN: 087516-656-3
Fifth Printing, 2004
DeVorss & Company, Publisher
P.O. Box 1389
Camarillo CA 93011-1389
www.devorss.com
CONTENTS
AWAKENED IMAGINATION
1. WHO IS YOUR IMAGINATION? 1
2. SEALED INSTRUCTIONS 11
3. HIGHWAYS OF THE INNER WORLD 25
4. THE PRUNING SHEARS OF REVISION 35
5. THE COIN OF HEAVEN 45
6. IT IS WITHIN 59
7. CREATION IS FINISHED 67
8. THE APPLE OF GOD’S EYE 79
Printed in the United States of America
THE SEARCH
85
To
Bill
“Imagination, the real and eternal world
of which this Vegetable Universe is but a
faint shadow. What is the life of Man but
Art and Science?”
William Blake , Jerusalem
“Imagination is more important than
knowledge. ”
Albert Einstein, On Science
Chapter One
WHO IS YOUR IMAGINATION?
I rest not from my great task
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open
the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of
Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of
God, the Human Imagination.
Blake, Jerusalem 5:18-20
C ertain words in the course of long use gather
so many strange connotations that they almost
cease to mean anything at all. Such a word is
imagination. This word is made to serve all man-
ner of ideas, some of them directly opposed to one
another. Fancy, thought, hallucination, suspicion :
indeed, so wide is its use and so varied its meanings,
the word imagination has no status nor fixed sig-
nificance. For example, we ask a man to “use his
imagination,” meaning that his present outlook is
too restricted and therefore not equal to the task.
2
Awakened Imagination
Who Is Your Imagination?
3
In the next breath we tell him that his ideas are
pure imagination,” thereby implying that his ideas
are unsound. We speak of a jealous or suspicious
person as a “victim of his own imagination,” mean-
ing that his thoughts are untrue. A minute later we
pay a man the highest tribute by describing him as
a man of imagination. Thus the word imagina-
tion has no definite meaning. Even the dictionary
gives us no help. It defines imagination as (1) the
picturing power or act of the mind, the construc-
tive or creative principle; (2) a phantasm; (3) an
irrational notion or belief; (4) planning, plotting or
scheming as involving mental construction.
I identify the central figure of the Gospels with
human imagination, the power which makes the
forgiveness of sins, the achievement of our goals,
inevitable.
All things were made by him; and without
him was not anything made that was
made.
John 1:3
There is only one thing in the world, Imagina-
tion, and all our deformations of it.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
Isaiah 53:3
Imagination is the very gateway of reality.
“Man,” said Blake, “is either the ark of God or a
phantom of the earth and of the water.” “Natur-
ally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.”
“The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination:
that is God himself, The Divine Body. VW': Jesus:
we are his Members.”
I know of no greater and truer definition of the
Imagination than that of Blake. By imagination we
have the power to be anything we desire to be.
Through imagination we disarm and transform the
violence of the world. Our most intimate as well as
our most casual relationships become imaginative
as we awaken to “the mystery hid from the ages,”
that Christ in us is our imagination. We then real-
ize that only as we live by imagination can we truly
be said to live at all.
I want this book to be the simplest, clearest,
frankest work I have the power to make it, that I
may encourage you to function imaginatively, that
you may open your “Immortal Eyes inwards into
the Worlds of Thought,” where you behold every
desire of your heart as ripe grain “white already to
harvest.”
I am come that they might have life, and
that they might have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
4
Awakened Imagination
Who Is Your Imagination?
5
The abundant life that Christ promised us is ours
to experience now, but not until we have the sense
of Christ as our imagination can we experience it.
The mystery hid from the ages. . . . Christ
in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:26, 27
is your imagination. This is the mystery which I am
ever striving to realize more keenly myself and to
urge upon others.
Imagination is our redeemer, “the Lord from
Heaven” born of man but not begotten of man.
Every man is Mary and birth to Christ must give.
If the story of the immaculate conception* and
birth of Christ appears irrational to man, it is only
because it is misread as biography, history, and cos-
mology, and the modern explorers of the imagina-
tion do not help by calling It the unconscious or
subconscious mind. Imagination’s birth and growth
is the gradual transition from a God of tradition to
a God of experience. If the birth of Christ in man
seems slow, it is only because man is unwilling to let
go the comfortable but false anchorage of tra-
dition.
* Neville uses this term in reference to what is traditionally
called the Virgin Birth.— Ed.
When imagination is discovered as the first prin-
ciple of religion, the stone of literal understanding
will have felt the rod of Moses and, like the rock of
Zin, issue forth the water of psychological meaning
to quench the thirst of humanity; and all who
take the proffered cup and live a life according
to this truth will transform the water of psycholog-
ical meaning into the wine of forgiveness. Then,
like the good Samaritan, they will pour it on the
wounds of all.
The Son of God is not to be found in history nor
in any external form. He can only be found as the
imagination of him in whom His presence becomes
manifest.
O would thy heart but be a manger for
His birth! God would once more become
a child on earth.
Man is the garden in which this only-begotten
Son of God sleeps. He awakens this Son by lifting
his imagination up to heaven and clothing men in
godlike stature. We must go on imagining better
than the best we know.
Man in the moment of his awakening to the
imaginative life must meet the test of Sonship.
“Father, reveal Thy Son in me”
and
6
Awakened Imagination
“It pleased God to reveal His
Son in me.”
Galatians 1:15, 16
The supreme test of Sonship is the forgiveness of
sin. The test that your imagination is Christ Jesus,
the Son of God, is your ability to forgive sin. Sin
means missing one’s mark in life, falling short of
one s ideal, failing to achieve one’s aim. Forgiveness
means identification of man with his ideal or aim
in life. This is the work of awakened imagination,
the supreme work, for it tests man’s ability to enter
into and partake of the nature of his opposite.
Let the weak man say, I am strong.
Joel 3:10
Reasonably this is impossible. Only awakened
imagination can enter into and partake of the
nature of its opposite.
This conception of Christ Jesus as human imagi-
nation raises these fundamental questions: Is
imagination a power sufficient, not merely to ena-
ble me to assume that I am strong, but is it also of
itself capable of executing the idea? Suppose that
I desire to be in some other place or situation.
Could I, by imagining myself into such a state and
place, bring about their physical realization? Sup-
Who Is Your Imagination?
7
pose I could not afford the journey and suppose my
present social and financial status oppose the idea
that I want to realize. Would imagination be suffi-
cient of itself to incarnate these desires? Does imagi-
nation comprehend reason? By reason I mean
deductions from the observations of the senses.
Does it recognize the external world of facts? In the
practical way of everyday life is imagination a com-
plete guide to behaviour? Suppose I am capable of
acting with continuous imagination, that is, sup-
pose I am capable of sustaining the feeling of my
wish fulfilled, will my assumption harden into fact?
And, if it does harden into fact, shall I on reflec-
tion find that my actions through the period of
incubation have been reasonable? Is my imagina-
tion a power sufficient, not merely to assume the
feeling of the wish fulfilled, but is it also of itself
capable of incarnating the idea? After assuming
that I am already what I want to be, must I con-
tinually guide myself by reasonable ideas and
actions in order to bring about the fulfillment of
my assumption?
Experience has convinced me that an assump-
tion, though false, if persisted in will harden into
fact, that continuous imagination is sufficient for
all things, and all my reasonable plans and actions
will never make up for my lack of continuous imag-
ination.
8
A wakened Imagination
Who Is Your Imagination?
9
Is it not true that the teachings of the Gospels
can only be received in terms of faith and that the
Son of God is constantly looking for signs of faith
in people — that is, faith in their own imagination?
Is not the promise
Believe that ye receive and ye shall re-
ceive.
Mark 11:24
the same as “Imagine that you are and you shall
be”? Was it not an imaginary state in which Moses
Endured, as seeing him who is invisible?
Hebrews 11:27
Was it not by the power of his own imagination
that he endured?
Truth depends upon the intensity of the imagi-
nation, not upon external facts. Facts are the fruit
bearing witness of the use or misuse of the imagi-
nation. Man becomes what he imagines. He has a
self-determined history. Imagination is the way, the
truth, the life revealed. We cannot get hold of truth
with the logical mind. Where the natural man of
sense sees a bud, imagination sees a rose full-blown.
Truth cannot be encompassed by facts. As we
awaken to the imaginative life, we discover that to
imagine a thing is so makes it so, that a true judg-
ment need not conform to the external reality to
which it relates.
The imaginative man does not deny the reality
of the sensuous outer world of Becoming, but he
knows that it is the inner world of continuous
Imagination that is the force by which the sensuous
outer world of Becoming is brought to pass. He sees
the outer world and all its happenings as projec-
tions of the inner world of Imagination. To him
everything is a manifestation of the mental activity
which goes on in man’s imagination without the
sensuous reasonable man being aware of it. But he
realizes that every man must become conscious of
this inner activity and see the relationship between
the inner causal world of imagination and the sen-
suous outer world of effects.
It is a marvelous thing to find that you can
imagine yourself into the state of your fulfilled
desire and escape from the jails which ignorance
built.
The Real Man is a Magnificent Imagination.
It is this self that must be awakened.
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from
the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
Ephesians 5:14
10
Awakened Imagination
The moment man discovers that his imagination is
Christ, he accomplishes acts which on this level can
only be called miraculous. But until man has the
sense of Christ as his imagination
You did not choose me, I have chosen you.
John 15:16
he will see everything in pure objectivity without
any subjective relationship. Not realizing that all
that he encounters is part of himself, he rebels at
the thought that he has chosen the conditions of his
life, that they are related by affinity to his own
mental activity. Man must firmly come to believe
that reality lies within him and not without.
Although others have bodies, a life of their own,
their reality is rooted in you, ends in you, as yours
ends in God.
Chapter Two
SEALED INSTRUCTIONS
The first power that meets us at the
threshold of the soul’s domain is the power
of imagination.
Dr. Franz Hartmann
I was first made conscious of the power, nature,
and redemptive function of imagination
through the teachings of my friend Abdullah; and
through subsequent experiences I learned that Jesus
was a symbol of the coming of imagination to man,
that the test of His birth in man was the individual’s
ability to forgive sin; that is, his ability to identify
himself or another with his aim in life.
Without the identification of man with his aim,
the forgiveness of sin is an impossibility, and only
the Son of God can forgive sin. Therefore man’s
ability to identify himself with his aim, though rea-
son and his senses deny it, is proof of the birth of
Christ in him. To passively surrender to appear-
12
Awakened Imagination
Sealed Instructions
13
ances and bow before the evidence of facts is to
confess that Christ is not yet born in you.
Although this teaching shocked and repelled me
at first — for I was a convinced and earnest Chris-
tian, and did not then know that Christianity could
not be inherited by the mere accident of birth but
must be consciously adopted as a way of life — it
stole later on, through visions, mystical revelations,
and practical experiences, into my understanding
and found its interpretation in a deeper mood. But
I must confess that it is a trying time when those
things are shaken which one has always taken for
granted.
Seest thou these great buildings? There
shall not be left one stone upon another
that shall not be thrown down.
Mark 13:2
Not one stone of literal understanding will be left
after one drinks the water of psychological mean-
ing. All that has been built up by natural religion
is cast into the flames of mental fire. Yet, what bet-
ter way is there to understand Christ Jesus than to
identify the central character of the Gospels with
human imagination — knowing that every time you
exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of
another you are literally mediating God to man
and thereby feeding and clothing Christ Jesus, and
that whenever you imagine evil against another you
are literally beating and crucifying Christ Jesus — ?
Every imagination of man is either the cup of cold
water or the sponge of vinegar to the parched lips
of Christ.
Let none of you imagine evil in your
hearts against his neighbor
warned the prophet Zechariah. When man heeds
this advice, he will awake from the imposed sleep
of Adam into the full consciousness of the Son of
God. He is in the world, and the world is made
by him, and the world knows him not: Human
Imagination.
I asked myself many times, “If my imagination
is Christ Jesus and all things are possible to Christ
Jesus, are all things possible to me?”
Through experience I have come to know that
when I identify myself with my aim in life, then
Christ is awake in me.
Christ is sufficient for all things.
I lay down my life that I might take it
again. No man taketh it from me, but I
lay it down of myself.
John 10:17, 18
14 Awakened Imagination
What a comfort it is to know that all that I
experience is the result of my own standard of
beliefs; that I am the center of my own web of cir-
cumstances and that as I change, so must my outer
world!
The world presents different appearances ac-
cording as our states of consciousness differ. What
we see when we are identified with a state cannot
be seen when we are no longer fused with it. By
state is meant all that man believes and consents to
as true. No idea presented to the mind can realize
itself unless the mind accepts it. It depends on the
acceptance, the state with which we are identified,
how things present themselves. In the fusion of
imagination and states is to be found the shaping
of the world as it seems. The world is a revelation
of the states with which imagination is fused. It is
the state from which we think that determines the
objective world in which we live. The rich man, the
poor man, the good man, the thief are what they
are by virtue of the states from which they view the
world. On the distinction between these states
depends the distinction between the worlds of these
men. Individually so different is this same world.
It is not the actions and behaviour of the good man
that should be matched but his point of view.
Outer reforms are useless if the inner state is not
changed. Success is gained not by imitating the
Sealed Instructions 15
outer actions of the successful but by right inner
actions and inner talking.
If we detach ourselves from a state, and we may
at any moment, the conditions and circumstances
to which that union gave being vanish.
It was in the fall of 1933 in New York City that
I approached Abdullah with a problem. He asked
me one simple question, “What do you want?” I
told him that I would like to spend the winter in
Barbados, but that I was broke. I literally did not
have a nickel.
“If you will imagine yourself to be in Barbados,”
said he, “thinking and viewing the world from that
state of consciousness instead of thinking of Bar-
bados, you will spend the winter there. You must
not concern yourself with the ways and means of
getting there, for the state of consciousness of
already being in Barbados, if occupied by your
imagination, will devise the means best suited to
realize itself.”
Man lives by committing himself to invisible
states, by fusing his imagination with what he
knows to be other than himself, and in this union
he experiences the results of that fusion. No one
can lose what he has save by detachment from the
state where the things experienced have their nat-
ural life.
“You must imagine yourself right into the state
16
Awakened Imagination
Sealed Instructions
17
of your fulfilled desire,” Abdullah told me, “and
fall asleep viewing the world from Barbados.”
The world which we describe from observation
must be as we describe it relative to ourselves. Our
imagination connects us with the state desired. But
we must use imagination masterfully, not as an
onlooker thinking of the end, but as a partaker
thinking /row the end. We must actually be there
in imagination. If we do this, our subjective ex-
perience will be realized objectively.
“This is not mere fancy,” said he, “but a truth
you can prove by experience.”
His appeal to enter into the wish fulfilled was the
secret of thinking from the end. Every state is
already there as “mere possibility” as long as you
think of it, but is overpoweringly real when you
think from it. Thinking from the end is the way of
Christ.
I began right there and then fixing my thoughts
beyond the limits of sense, beyond that aspect to
which my present state gave being, towards the
feeling of already being in Barbados and viewing
the world from that standpoint.
He emphasized the importance of the state from
which man views the world as he falls asleep. All
prophets claim that the voice of God is chiefly
heard by man in dreams.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when
deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumber -
ings upon the bed; then he openeth the
ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.
Job 33:15, 16
That night and for several nights thereafter I fell
asleep in the assumption that I was in my father’s
house in Barbados. Within a month I received a
letter from my brother saying that he had a strong
desire to have the family together at Christmas and
asking me to use the enclosed steamship ticket for
Barbados. I sailed two days after I received my
brother’s letter and spent a wonderful winter in
Barbados.
This experience has convinced me that man can
be anything he pleases if he will make the concep-
tion habitual and think from the end. It has also
shown me that I can no longer excuse myself by
placing the blame on the world of external things
— that my good and my evil have no dependency
except from myself— that it depends on the state
from which I view the world how things present
themselves.
Man, who is free in his choice, acts from concep-
tions which he freely, though not always wisely,
chooses. All conceivable states are awaiting our
r
18 Awakened Imagination
choice and occupancy, but no amount of ration-
alizing will of itself yield us the state of conscious-
ness which is the only thing worth having.
The imaginative image is the only thing to seek.
The ultimate purpose of imagination is to create
in us “the spirit of Jesus,” which is continual for-
giveness of sin, continual identification of man with
his ideal. Only by identifying ourselves with our
aim can we forgive ourselves for having missed it.
All else is labor in vain. On this path, to whatever
place or state we convey our imagination, to that
place or state we will gravitate physically also.
In my Father’s house are many mansions;
if it were not so, I would have told you. I
go to prepare a place for you. And if I go
and prepare a place for you, I will come
again, and receive you unto myself; that
where I am there ye may be also.
John 14:2, 3
By sleeping in my father’s house in my imagination
as though I slept there in the flesh, I fused my
imagination with that state and was compelled to
experience that state in the flesh also.
So vivid was this state to me, I could have been
seen in my father’s house had any sensitive entered
Sealed Instructions 19
the room where in imagination I was sleeping. A
man can be seen where in imagination he is, for a
man must be where his imagination is, for his
imagination is himself. This I know from experi-
ence, for I have been seen by a few to whom I
desired to be seen, when physically I was hundreds
of miles away.
I, by the intensity of my imagination and feeling,
imagining and feeling myself to be in Barbados
instead of merely thinking of Barbados, had
spanned the vast Atlantic to influence my brother
into desiring my presence to complete the family
circle at Christmas. Thinking/rom the end, from
the feeling of my wish fulfilled, was the source of
everything that happened as outer cause, such as
my brother’s impulse to send me a steamship ticket;
and it was also the cause of everything that ap-
peared as results.
In Ideas of Good and Evil, W. B. Yeats, having
described a few experiences similar to this experi-
ence of mine, writes:
If all who have described events like this
have not dreamed, we should rewrite our
histories, for all men, certainly all imagi-
native men, must be forever casting forth
enchantments, glamour, illusions; and all
20
Awakened Imagination
men, especially tranquil men who have no
powerful egotistic life, must be continually
passing under their power.
Determined imagination, thinking/rom the end,
is the beginning of all miracles.
I would like to give you an immense belief in
miracles, but a miracle is only the name given by
those who have no knowledge of the power and
function of imagination to the works of imagina-
tion. Imagining oneself into the feeling of the wish
fulfilled is the means by which a new state is
entered. This gives the state the quality of is-ness.
Hermes tells us:
That which is, is manifested; that which
has been or shall be, is unmanifested, but
not dead; for Soul, the eternal activity of
God, animates all things.
The future must become the present in the imag-
ination of the one who would wisely and consciously
create circumstances. We must translate vision into
Being, thinking of into thinking/rom. Imagination
must center itself in some state and view the world
from that state. Thinking/rom the end is an in-
tense perception of the world of fulfilled desire.
Thinking/rom the state desired is creative living.
Sealed Instructions
21
Ignorance of this ability to think from the end is
bondage. It is the root of all bondage with which
man is bound. To passively surrender to the evi-
dence of the senses underestimates the capacities of
the Inner Self. Once man accepts thinking/rom the
end as a creative principle in which he can cooper-
ate, then he is redeemed from the absurdity of ever
attempting to achieve his objective by merely think-
ing of it.
Construct all ends according to the pattern of
fulfilled desire.
The whole of life is just the appeasement of hun-
ger, and the infinite states of consciousness from
which a man can view the world are purely a means
of satisfying that hunger. The principle upon which
each state is organized is some form of hunger to lift
the passion for self-gratification to ever higher and
higher levels of experience. Desire is the mainspring
of the mental machinery. It is a blessed thing. It is
a right and natural craving which has a state of
consciousness as its right and natural satisfaction.
But one thing I do, forgetting the things
which are behind, and stretching forward
to the things which are before, I press on
toward the goal.
Philippians 3:13, 14
22
Awakened Imagination
Sealed Instructions
23
It is necessary to have an aim in life. Without an
aim we drift. “What wantest thou of me?” is the
implied question asked most often by the central
figure of the Gospels. In defining your aim, you
must want it.
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Psalms 42:1
It is lack of this passionate direction to life that
makes man fail of accomplishment.
The spanning of the bridge between desire —
thinking of— and satisfaction — thinking/rom — is
all-important. We must move mentally from think-
ing of the end to thinking/rom the end. This, rea-
son could never do. By its nature it is restricted to
the evidence of the senses; but imagination, having
no such limitation, can. Desire exists to be gratified
in the activity of imagination. Through imagina-
tion man escapes from the limitation of the senses
and the bondage of reason.
There is no stopping the man who can think
from the end. Nothing can stop him. He creates the
means and grows his way out of limitation into ever
greater and greater mansions of the Lord. It does
not matter what he has been or what he is. All that
matters is “what does he want?” He knows that the
world is a manifestation of the mental activity
which goes on within himself, so he strives to deter-
mine and control the ends from which he thinks. In
his imagination he dwells in the end, confident that
he shall dwell there in the flesh also. He puts his
whole trust in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and
lives by committing himself to that state, for the art
of fortune is to tempt him so to do. Like the man
at the pool of Bethesda, he is ready for the moving
of the waters of imagination. Knowing that every
desire is ripe grain to him who knows how to think
from the end, he is indifferent to mere reasonable
probability and confident that through continuous
imagination his assumptions will harden into fact.
But how to persuade men everywhere that think-
ingfrom the end is the only living, how to foster it
in every activity of man, how to reveal it as the
plenitude of life and not the compensation of the
disappointed: that is the problem.
Life is a controllable thing. You can experience
what you please once you realize that you are His
Son, and that you are what you are by virtue of the
state of consciousness from which you think and
view the world,
Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I
have is thine.
Luke 15:31
Chapter Three
HIGHWAYS OF THE INNER WORLD
And the children struggled within her
. . . and the Lord said unto her, two
nations are in thy womb, and two manner
of people shall be separated from thy
bowels; and the one people shall be
stronger than the other people; and the
elder shall serve the younger.
Genesis 25:22-23
D uality is an inherent condition of life. Every-
thing that exists is double. Man is a dual crea-
ture with contrary principles embedded in his
nature. They war within him and present attitudes
to life which are antagonistic. This conflict is the
eternal enterprise, the war in heaven, the never-
ending struggle of the younger or inner man of
imagination to assert His supremacy over the elder
or outer man of sense.
26
Awakened Imagination
The first shall be last and the last shall be
first- , , _ 0 „
Matthew 19:30
He it is, who coming after me is preferred
bef ° reme ' John 1:27
The second man is the Lord from heaven.
1 Cor. 15:47
Man begins to awake to the imaginative life the
moment he feels the presence of another being in
himself.
In your limbs lie nations twain, rival races
from their birth; one the mastery shall
gain, the younger o’er the elder reign.
There are two distinct centers of thought or out-
looks on the world possessed by every man. The
Bible speaks of these two outlooks as natural and
spiritual.
The natural man receiveth not the things
of the spirit of God: for they are foolish-
ness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14
Highways of the Inner World
27
Man’s inner body is as real in the world of sub-
jective experience as his outer physical body is real
in the world of external realities, but the inner body
expresses a more fundamental part of reality. This
existing inner body of man must be consciously
exercised and directed. The inner world of thought
and feeling to which the inner body is attuned has
its real structure and exists in its own higher space.
There are two kinds of movement, one that is
according to the inner body and another that is
according to the outer body. The movement which
is according to the inner body is causal, but the
outer movement is under compulsion. The inner
movement determines the outer which is joined to
it, bringing into the outer a movement that is simi-
lar to the actions of the inner body. Inner move-
ment is the force by which all events are brought to
pass. Outer movement is subject to the compulsion
applied to it by the movement of the inner body.
Whenever the actions of the inner body match
the actions which the outer must take to appease
desire, that desire will be realized.
Construct mentally a drama which implies that
your desire is realized and make it one which
involves movement of self. Immobilize your outer
physical self. Act precisely as though you were
going to take a nap, and start the predetermined
action in imagination. A vivid representation of the
28
Awakened Imagination
action is the beginning of that action. Then, as you
are falling asleep, consciously imagine yourself into
the scene. The length of the sleep is not important,
a short nap is sufficient, but carrying the action
into sleep thickens fancy into fact.
At first your thoughts may be like rambling
sheep that have no shepherd. Don’t despair. Should
your attention stray seventy times seven, bring it
back seventy times seven to its predetermined
course until from sheer exhaustion it follows the
appointed path. The inner journey must never be
without direction. When you take to the inner
road, it is to do what you did mentally before you
started. You go for the prize you have already seen
and accepted.
In The Road to Xanadu Professor John Living-
ston Lowes says:
But I have long had the feeling, which this
study had matured to a conviction, that
Fancy and Imagination are not two pow-
ers at all, but one. The valid distinction
which exists between them lies, not in the
materials with which they operate, but
in the degree of intensity of the operant
power itself. Working at high tension, the
imaginative energy assimilates and trans-
mutes; keyed low, the same energy aggre-
Highways of the Inner World
29
gates and yokes together those images
which at its highest pitch, it merges in-
dissolubly into one.
Fancy assembles, imagination fuses.
Here is a practical application of this theory. A
year ago a blind girl living in the city of San Fran-
cisco found herself confronted with a transporta-
tion problem. A rerouting of buses forced her to
make three transfers between her home and her
office. This lengthened her trip from fifteen
minutes to two hours and fifteen minutes. She
thought seriously about this problem and came to
the decision that a car was the solution. She knew
that she could not drive a car but felt that she could
be driven in one. Putting this theory to the test that
“whenever the actions of the inner self correspond
to the actions which the outer, physical self must
take to appease desire, that desire will be realized,”
she said to herself, “I will sit here and imagine that
I am being driven to my office.”
Sitting in her living room, she began to imagine
herself seated in a car. She felt the rhythm of the
motor. She imagined that she smelled the odor of
gasoline, felt the motion of the car, touched the
sleeve of the driver and felt that the driver was a
man. She felt the car stop, and turning to her com-
panion, said, “Thank you very much, sir.” To
\
30
31
Awakened Imagination
Highways of the Inner World
which he replied, “The pleasure is all mine.” Then
she stepped from the car and heard the door snap
shut as she closed it.
She told me that she centered her imagination on
being in a car and although blind viewed the city
from her imaginary ride. She did not think of the
ride. She thought from the ride and all that it
implied. This controlled and subjectively directed
purposive ride raised her imagination to its full
potency. She kept her purpose ever before her,
knowing there was cohesion in purposive inner
movement. In these mental journeys an emotional
continuity must be sustained — the emotion of ful-
filled desire. Expectancy and desire were so in-
tensely joined that they passed at once from a
mental state into a physical act.
The inner self moves along the predetermined
course best when the emotions collaborate. The
inner self must be fired, and it is best fired by the
thought of great deeds and personal gain. We must
take pleasure in our actions.
On two successive days the blind girl took her
imaginary ride, giving it all the joy and sensory
vividness of reality. A few hours after her second
imaginary ride, a friend told her of a story in the
evening paper. It was a story of a man who was
interested in the blind. The blind girl phoned him
and stated her problem. The very next day, on his
way home, he stopped in at a bar and while there
had the urge to tell the story of the blind girl to his
friend the proprietor. A total stranger, on hearing
the story, volunteered to drive the blind girl home
every day. The man who told the story then said,
“If you will take her home, I will take her to work.”
This was over a year ago, and since that day this
blind girl has been driven to and from her office by
these two gentlemen. Now, instead of spending two
hours and fifteen minutes on three buses, she is at
her office in less than fifteen minutes. And on that
first ride to her office she turned to her good
Samaritan and said, “Thank you very much, sir”;
and he replied, “The pleasure is all mine.”
Thus, the objects of her imagination were to her
the realities of which the physical manifestation was
only the witness. The determinative animating
principle was the imaginative ride. Her triumph
could be a surprise only to those who did not know
of her inner ride. She mentally viewed the world
from this imaginative ride with such a clearness of
vision that every aspect of the city attained identity.
These inner movements not only produce cor-
responding outer movements: this is the law which
operates beneath all physical appearances. He who
practices these exercises of bilocation will develop
unusual powers of concentration and quiescence
and will inevitably achieve waking consciousness on
32
Awakened Imagination
the inner and dimensionally larger world. Actualiz-
ing strongly, she fulfilled her desire, for, viewing
the city from the feeling of her wish fulfilled, she
matched the state desired and granted that to her-
self which sleeping men ask of God.
To realize your desire, an action must start in
your imagination, apart from the evidence of the
senses, involving movement of self and implying
fulfillment of your desire. Whenever it is the action
which the outer self takes to appease desire, that
desire will be realized.
The movement of every visible object is caused
not by things outside the body but by things within
it which operate from within outward. The journey
is in yourself. You travel along the highways of the
inner world. Without inner movement it is impos-
sible to bring forth anything. Inner action is in-
troverted sensation. If you will construct mentally
a drama which implies that you have realized your
objective, then close your eyes and drop your
thoughts inward, centering your imagination all
the while in the predetermined action and partake
in that action, you will become a self-determined
being.
Inner action orders all things according to the
nature of itself. Try it and see whether a desirable
ideal once formulated is possible, for only by this
Highways of the Inner World
33
process of experiment can you realize your poten-
tialities. It is thus that this creative principle is
being realized. So the clue to purposive living is to
center your imagination in the action and feeling
of fulfilled desire with such awareness, such sensi-
tiveness, that you initiate and experience move-
ment upon the inner world.
Ideas only act if they are felt, if they awaken
inner movement. Inner movement is conditioned
by self-motivation, outer movement by compulsion.
Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread,
the same give I unto you.
Joshua 1:3
and remember
The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is
mighty.
Zephaniah 3:17
Chapter Four
THE PRUNING SHEARS OF REVISION
The second man is the Lord from heaven.
1 Corinthians 15:47
Never will he say caterpillars. He’ll say,
“There’s a lot of butterflies — as — is —
to-be on our cabbages, Prue.” He won’t
say, “It’s winter.” He’ll say, “Summer’s
sleeping.” And there’s no bud little
enough nor sad-coloured enough for
Kester not to callen it the beginnings of
the blow.
Mary Webb, Precious Bane
T he very first act of correction or cure is always
“revise.” One must start with oneself. It is one’s
attitude that must be changed.
What we are, that only can we see.
Emerson
1
T
36 Awakened Imagination
It is a most healthy and productive exercise to
daily relive the day as you wish you had lived it,
revising the scenes to make them conform to your
ideals. For instance, suppose today’s mail brought
disappointing news. Revise the letter. Mentally
rewrite it and make it conform to the news you wish
you had received. Then, in imagination, read the
revised letter over and over again. This is the
essence of revision, and revision results in repeal.
The one requisite is to arouse your attention in
a way and to such intensity that you become wholly
absorbed in the revised action. You will experience
an expansion and refinement of the senses by this
imaginative exercise and eventually achieve vision.
But always remember that the ultimate purpose of
this exercise is to create in you “the Spirit of Jesus,”
which is continual forgiveness of sin.
Revision is of greatest importance when the
motive is to change oneself, when there is a sincere
desire to be something different, when the longing
is to awaken the ideal active spirit of forgiveness.
Without imagination man remains a being of sin.
Man either goes forward to imagination or remains
imprisoned in his senses. To go forward to imagi-
nation is to forgive. Forgiveness is the life of the
imagination. The art of living it the art of forgiv-
ing. Forgiveness is, in fact, experiencing in imagi-
nation the revised version of the day, experiencing
The Pruning Shears of Revision 37
in imagination what you wish you had experienced
in the flesh. Every time one really forgives — that is,
every time one relives the event as it should have
been lived — one is born again.
“Father forgive them” is not the plea that comes
once a year but the opportunity that comes every
day. The idea of forgiving is a daily possibility, and,
if it is sincerely done, it will lift man to higher and
higher levels of being. He will experience a daily
Easter, and Easter is the idea of rising transformed.
And that should be almost a continuous process.
Freedom and forgiveness are indissolubly linked.
Not to forgive is to be at war with ourselves, for we
are freed according to our capacity to forgive.
Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.
Luke 6:37
Forgive, not merely from a sense of duty or ser-
vice; forgive because you want to.
Thy ways are ways of pleasantness and all
thy paths are peace.
Proverbs 3:17
You must take pleasure in revision. You can for-
give others effectively only when you have a sincere
desire to identify them with their ideal. Duty has no
38
Awakened Imagination
momentum. Forgiveness is a matter of deliberately
withdrawing attention from the unrevised day and
giving it full strength, and joyously, to the revised
day. If a man begins to revise even a little of the
vexations and troubles of the day, then he begins
to work practically on himself. Every revision is a
victory over himself and therefore a victory over his
enemy.
A man’s foes are those of his own house-
hold.
Matthew 10:36
and his household is his state of mind. He changes
his future as he revises his day.
When a man practices the art of forgiveness, of
revision, however factual the scene on which sight
then rests, he revises it with his imagination and
gazes on one never before witnessed. The mag-
nitude of the change which any act of revision
involves makes such change appear wholly improb-
able to the realist — the unimaginative man; but the
radical changes in the fortunes of the Prodigal were
all produced by a “change of heart.”
The battle man fights is fought out in his own
imagination. The man who does not revise the day
has lost the vision of that life, into the likeness of
which it is the true labour of the “Spirit of Jesus” to
transform this life.
The Pruning Shears of Revision
39
All things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, even so do ye to them:
for this is the law.
Matthew 7:12
Here is the way an artist friend forgave herself
and was set free from pain, annoyance, and
unfriendliness. Knowing that nothing but forget-
fulness and forgiveness will bring us to new values,
she cast herself upon her imagination and escaped
from the prison of her senses. She writes:
“Thursday I taught all day in the art school.
Only one small thing marred the day. Coming into
my afternoon classroom I discovered the janitor
had left all the chairs on top of the desks after
cleaning the floor. As I lifted a chair down it
slipped from my grasp and struck me a sharp blow
on the instep of my right foot. I immediately exa-
mined my thoughts and found that I had criticized
the man for not doing his job properly. Since he
had lost his helper I realized he probably felt he
had done more than enough and it was an un-
wanted gift that had bounced and hit me on the
foot. Looking down at my foot I saw both my skin
and nylons were intact so forgot the whole thing.
“That night, after I had been working intensely
for about three hours on a drawing, I decided to
make myself a cup of coffee. To my utter amaze-
ment I couldn’t manage my right foot at all and it
40
Awakened Imagination
The Pruning Shears of Revision
41
was giving out great bumps of pain. I hopped over
to a chair and took off my slipper to look at it. The
entire foot was a strange purplish pink, swollen out
of shape and red hot. I tried walking on it and
found that it just flapped. I had no control over it
whatsoever. It looked like one of two things: either
I had cracked a bone when I dropped the chair on
it or something could be dislocated.
“ ‘No use speculating what it is. Better get rid of
it right away.’ So I became quiet, all ready to melt
myself into light. To my complete bewilderment
my imagination refused to cooperate. It just said
‘No.’ This sort of thing often happens when I am
painting. I just started to argue ‘Why not?’ It just
kept saying ‘No.’ Finally I gave up and said You
know I am in pain. I am trying hard not to be
frightened, but you are the boss. What do you want
to do?’ The answer: ‘Go to bed and review the day’s
events.’ So I said ‘All right. But let me tell you if my
foot isn’t perfect by tomorrow morning you have
only yourself to blame.’
“After arranging the bed clothes so they didn t
touch my foot I started to review the day. It was
slow going as I had difficulty keeping my attention
away from my foot. I went through the whole day,
saw nothing to add to the chair incident. But when
I reached the early evening I found myself coming
face to face with a man who for the past year has
made a point of not speaking. The first time this
happened I thought he had grown deaf. I had
known him since school days, but we had never
done more than say ‘hello’ and comment on the
weather. Mutual friends assured me I had done
nothing, that he had said he never liked me and
finally decided it was not worthwhile speaking. I
had said ‘Hi!’ He hadn’t answered. I found that I
thought ‘Poor guy — what a horrid state to be in. I
shall do something about this ridiculous state of
affairs.’ So, in my imagination, I stopped right
there and re-did the scene. I said ‘Hi!’ He answered
‘Hi!’ and smiled. I now thought ‘Good old Ed.’ I ran
the scene over a couple of times and went on to the
next incident and finished up the day.
“ ‘Now what — do we do my foot or the concert?’
I had been melting and wrapping up a wonderful
present of courage and success for a friend who was
to make her debut the following day and I had
been looking forward to giving it to her tonight. My
imagination sounded a little bit solemn as it said
Let us do the concert. It will be more fun.’ ‘But
first couldn’t we just take my perfectly good imagi-
nation foot out of this physical one before we start?’
I pleaded. ‘By all means.’
“That done, I had a lovely time at the concert
and my friend got a tremendous ovation.
“By now I was very, very sleepy and fell asleep
L
42 Awakened Imagination
doing my project. The next morning, as I was put-
ting on my slipper, I suddenly had a quick memory
picture of withdrawing a discolored and swollen
foot from the same slipper. I took my foot out and
looked at it. It was perfectly normal in every
respect. There was a tiny pink spot on the instep
where I remembered I had hit it with the chair.
‘What a vivid dream that was!’ I thought and
dressed. While waiting for my coffee I wandered
over to my drafting table and saw that all my
brushes were lying helter-skelter and unwashed.
‘Whatever possessed you to leave your brushes like
that?’ ‘Don’t you remember? It was because of your
foot.’ So it hadn’t been a dream after all but a
beautiful healing.”
She had won by the art of revision what she
would never have won by force.
In Heaven the only Art of Living Is For-
getting & Forgiving Especially to the
Female.
Blake
We should take our life, not as it appears to be,
but from the vision of this artist, from the vision of
the world made perfect that is buried under all
minds — buried and waiting for us to revise the day.
The Pruning Shears of Revision 43
We are led to believe a lie when we see
with, not through the eve.
Blake
A revision of the day, and what she held to be so
stubbornly real was no longer so to her and, like a
dream, had quietly faded away.
You can revise the day to please yourself and by
experiencing in imagination the revised speech and
actions not only modify the trend of your life story
but turn all its discords into harmonies. The one
who discovers the secret of revision cannot do other-
wise than let himself be guided by love. Your effec-
tiveness will increase with practice. Revision is the
way by which right can find its appropriate might.
“Resist not evil,” for all passionate conflicts result
in an interchange of characteristics.
To him that knoweth to do good, and
doeth it not, to him it is sin.
James 4:17
To know the truth you must live the truth, and
to live the truth your inner actions must match the
actions of your fulfilled desire. Expectancy and
desire must become one. Your outer world is only
actualized inner movement. Through ignorance of
44
Awakened Imagination
the law of revision those who take to warfare are
perpetually defeated.
Only concepts that idealize depict the truth.
Your ideal of man is his truest self. It is because
I firmly believe that whatever is most profoundly
imaginative is, in reality, most directly practical
that I ask you to live imaginatively and to think
into, and to personally appropriate, the transcen-
dent saying “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Don’t blame; only resolve. It is not man and the
earth at their loveliest, but you practicing the art
of revision make paradise. The evidence of this
truth can lie only in your own experience of it. Try
revising the day. It is to the pruning shears of revi-
sion that we owe our prime fruit.
Chapter Five
THE COIN OF HEAVEN
“Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so,
make it so?” And the prophet replied “All
poets believe that it does. And in ages of
imagination this firm persuasion removed
mountains: but many are not capable of
a firm persuasion of anything.”
Blake, Marriage of
Heaven and Hell
Let every man be fully persuaded in his
own mind.
Romans 14:5
P ersuasion is an inner effort of intense atten-
tion. To listen attentively as though you heard
is to evoke, to activate. By listening, you can hear
what you want to hear and persuade those beyond
the range of the outer ear. Speak it inwardly in your
imagination only. Make your inner conversation
46
Awakened Imagination
match your fulfilled desire. What you desire to hear
without, you must hear within. Embrace the with-
out within and become one who hears only that
which implies the fulfillment of his desire, and all
the external happenings in the world will become
a bridge leading to the objective realization of your
desire.
Your inner speech is perpetually written all
around you in happenings. Learn to relate these
happenings to your inner speech and you will
become self-taught. By inner speech is meant those
mental conversations which you carry on with your-
self. They may be inaudible when you are awake
because of the noise and distractions of the outer
world of becoming, but they are quite audible in
deep meditation and dream. But whether they be
audible or inaudible, you are their author and
fashion your world in their likeness.
There is a God in heaven [and heaven is
within you] that revealeth secrets, and
maketh known to the king Nebuchadnez-
zar what shall be in the latter days. Thy
dream, and the visions of thy head upon
thy bed, are these.
Daniel 2:28
Inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire is the
way to create an intelligible world for yourself.
The Coin of Heaven
47
Observe your inner speech for it is the cause of
future action. Inner speech reveals the state of
consciousness from which you view the world. Make
your inner speech match your fulfilled desire, for
your inner speech is manifested all around you in
happenings.
If any man offend not in word, the same
is a perfect man and able also to bridle the
whole body. Behold, we put bits in the
horses’ mouths, that they may obey us;
and we turn about their whole body.
Behold also the ships, which though they
be so great, and are driven by fierce
winds, yet are they turned about with a
very small helm, whithersoever the gover-
nor listeth. Even so the tongue is a little
member, and boasteth great things.
Behold, how great a matter a little fire
kindleth!
James 3:2-5
The whole manifested world goes to show us what
use we have made of the Word — Inner Speech. An
uncritical observation of our inner talking will re-
veal to us the ideas from which we view the world.
Inner talking mirrors our imagination, and our
imagination mirrors the state with which it is fused.
If the state with which we are fused is the cause of
48
Awakened Imagination
The Coin of Heaven
49
the phenomenon of our life, then we are relieved of
the burden of wondering what to do, for we have
no alternative but to identify ourselves with our
aim; and inasmuch as the state with which we are
identified mirrors itself in our inner speech, then to
change the state with which we are fused, we must
first change our inner talking. It is our inner con-
versations which make tomorrow s facts.
Put off the former conversation, the old
man, which is corrupt . . . and be renewed
in the spirit of your mind . . . put on
the new man, which is created in righ-
teousness.
Ephesians 4:22-24
Our minds, like our stomachs, are whet-
ted by change of food.
Quintillian
Stop all of the old mechanical negative inner
talking and start a new positive and constructive
inner speech from premises of fulfilled desire. Inner
talking is the beginning, the sowing of the seeds of
future action. To determine the action, you must
consciously initiate and control your inner talking.
Construct a sentence which implies the fulfillment
of your aim, such as “I have a large, steady, de-
pendable income, consistent with integrity and mu-
tual benefit,” or “I am happily married,” “I am
wanted,” “I am contributing to the good of the
world,” and repeat such a sentence over and over
until you are inwardly affected by it. Our inner
speech represents in various ways the world we live
in.
In the beginning was the Word.
John 1:1
That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder
fields! The sesamum was sesamum, the
corn was corn. The Silence and the Dark-
ness knew! So is a man’s fate born.
The Light of Asia
Ends run true to origins.
Those that go searching for love only
make manifest their own lovelessness. And
the loveless never find love, only the lov-
ing find love, and they never have to seek
for it.
D. H. Lawrence
Man attracts what he is. The art of life is to sustain
the feeling of the wish fulfilled and let things come
to you, not to go after them or think they flee away.
Observe your inner talking and remember your
50
Awakened Imagination
The Coin of Heaven
51
aim. Do they match? Does your inner talking
match what you would say audibly had you
achieved your goal? The individual’s inner speech
and actions attract the conditions of his life.
Through uncritical self-observation of your inner
talking you find where you are in the inner world,
and where you are in the inner world is what you
are in the outer world. You put on the new man
whenever ideals and inner speech match. In this
way alone can the new man be born.
Inner talking matures in the dark. From the dark
it issues into the light. The right inner speech is the
speech that would be yours were you to realize your
ideal. In other words, it is the speech of fulfilled
desire.
“I am that.”
There are two gifts which God has be-
stowed upon man alone, and on no other
mortal creature. These two are mind and
speech; and the gift of mind and speech
is equivalent to that of immortality. If a
man uses these two gifts rightly, he will
differ in nothing from the immortals . . .
and when he quits the body, mind and
speech will be his guides, and by them
he will be brought into the troop of the
gods and the souls that have attained to
bliss.
Hermetica, Walter Scott’s translation
The circumstances and conditions of life are
outpictured inner talking, solidified sound. Inner
speech calls events into existence. In every event is
the creative sound that is its life and being. All that
a man believes and consents to as true reveals itself
in his inner speech. It is his Word, his life.
Try to notice what you are saying in yourself at
this moment, to what thoughts and feelings you are
consenting. They will be perfectly woven into your
tapestry of life. To change your life you must
change your inner talking, for “life,” said Hermes,
“is the union of Word and Mind.” When imagina-
tion matches your inner speech to fulfilled desire,
there will then be a straight path in yourself from
within out, and the without will instantly reflect the
within for you, and you will know reality is only
actualized inner talking.
Receive with meekness the inborn Word
which is able to save your souls.
James 1:21
Every stage of man’s progress is made by the con-
scious exercise of his imagination matching his
52 Awakened Imagination
inner speech to his fulfilled desire. Because man
does not perfectly match them the results are un-
certain, while they might be perfectly certain. Per-
sistent assumption of the wish fulfilled is the means
of fulfilling the intention. As we control our inner
talking, matching it to our fulfilled desires, we can
lay aside all other processes. Then we simply act by
clear imagination and intention. We imagine the
wish fulfilled and carry on mental conversations
from that premise.
Through controlled inner talking from premises
of fulfilled desire, seeming miracles are performed.
The future becomes the present and reveals itself
in our inner speech. To be held by the inner speech
of fulfilled desire is to be safely anchored in life.
Our lives may seem to be broken by events, but they
are never broken so long as we retain the inner
speech of fulfilled desire. All happiness depends on
the active voluntary use of imagination to construct
and inwardly affirm that we are what we want to
be. We match ourselves to our ideals by constantly
remembering our aim and identifying ourselves
with it. We fuse with our aims by frequently
occupying the feeling of our wish fulfilled. It is the
frequency, the habitual occupancy, that is the
secret of success. The oftener we do it, the more
natural it is. Fancy assembles. Continuous imagi-
nation fuses.
It is possible to resolve every situation by the
The Coin of Heaven 53
proper use of imagination. Our task is to get the
right sentence, the one which implies that our
desire is realized, and fire the imagination with it.
All this is intimately connected with the mystery of
“the still small voice.”
Inner talking reveals the activities of imagina-
tion, activities which are the causes of the circum-
stances of life. As a rule, man is totally unaware of
his inner talking and therefore sees himself not as
the cause but the victim of circumstance. To con-
sciously create circumstance, man must consciously
direct his inner speech, matching “the still small
voice” to his fulfilled desires.
He calls things not seen as though they
were.
Romans 4:17
Right inner speech is essential. It is the greatest of
the arts. It is the way out of limitation into free-
dom. Ignorance of this art has made the world a
battlefield and penitentiary where blood and sweat
alone are expected, when it should be a place of
marvelling and wondering. Right inner talking is
the first step to becoming what you want to be.
Speech is an image of mind, and mind is
an image of God.
Hermetica, Scott translation
54
Awakened Imagination
On the morning of April 12, 1953, my wife was
awakened by the sound of a great voice of authority
speaking within her and saying, “You must stop
spending your thoughts, time, and money. Every-
thing in life must be an investment.
To spend is to waste, to squander, to lay out
without return. To invest is to lay out for a purpose
from which a profit is expected. This revelation of
my wife is about the importance of the moment. It
is about the transformation of the moment. What
we desire does not lie in the future but in ourselves
at this very moment. At any moment in our lives we
are faced with an infinite choice: “what we are and
what we want to be.” And what we want to be is
already existent, but to realize it we must match
our inner speech and actions to it.
If two of you shall agree on earth as touch-
ing anything that they shall ask, it shall be
done for them of my Father which is in
heaven.
Matthew 18:19
It is only what is done now that counts. The present
moment does not recede into the past. It advances
into the future to confront us, spent or invested.
Thought is the coin of heaven. Money is its earthly
symbol. Every moment must be invested, and our
The Coin of Heaven
55
inner talking reveals whether we are spending or
investing. Be more interested in what you are
inwardly “saying now” than what you have “said”
by choosing wisely what you think and what you
feel now.
Any time we feel misunderstood, misused,
neglected, suspicious, afraid, we are spending our
thoughts and wasting our time. Whenever we
assume the feeling of being what we want to be, we
are investing. We cannot abandon the moment to
negative inner talking and expect to retain com-
mand of life. Before us go the results of all that
seemingly is behind. Not gone is the last moment
— but oncoming.
My word shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I
please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11
The circumstances of life are the muffled utter-
ances of the inner talking that made them — the
word made visible.
“The Word,” said Hermes, “is Son, and
the Mind is Father of the Word. They are
56
Awakened Imagination
not separate one from the other; for life is
the union of Word and Mind.”
He willed us forth from Himself by the
Word of truth.
James 1:18
Let us
be imitators of God as dear children
Ephesians 5:1
and use our inner speech wisely to mould an outer
world in harmony with our ideal.
The Lord spake by me, and his Word was
in my tongue.
2 Samuel 23:2
The mouth of God is the mind of man. Feed God
only the best.
Whatsoever things are of good report . . .
think on these things.
Philippians 4:8
The present moment is always precisely right for an
investment, to inwardly speak the right word.
The Coin of Heaven
57
The word is very near to you, in your
mouth, and in your heart, that you may
do it. See, I have set before you this day
life and good, death and evil, blessings
and cursings. Choose life.
Deuteronomy 30: 14, 15, 19
You choose life and good and blessings by being
that which you choose. Like is known to like alone.
Make your inner speech bless and give good
reports. Man’s ignorance of the future is the result
of his ignorance of his inner talking. His inner talk-
ing mirrors his imagination, and his imagination is
a government in which the opposition never comes
into power.
If the reader ask, “What if the inner speech
remains subjective and is unable to find an object
for its love?” the answer is: it will not remain sub-
jective, for the very simple reason that inner speech
is always objectifying itself. What frustrates and
festers and becomes the disease that afflicts human-
ity is man’s ignorance of the art of matching inner
words to fulfilled desire. Inner speech mirrors
imagination, and imagination is Christ.
Alter your inner speech, and your perceptual
world changes. Whenever inner speech and desire
are in conflict, inner speech invariably wins.
Because inner speech objectifies itself, it is easy to
58
Awakened Imagination
see that if it matches desire, desire will be objec-
tively realized. Were this not so, I would say with
Blake
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than
nurse unacted desires.
But I know from experience
The tongue . . . setteth on fire the course
of nature.
James 3:6
Chapter Six
IT IS WITHIN
. . . Rivers, Mountains, Cities, Villages,
All are Human, & when you enter into
their Bosoms you walk
In Heavens & Earths, as in your own
Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth & all you behold; tho’ it
appears Without, it is Within,
In your Imagination, of which this World
of Mortality is but a Shadow.
Blake, Jerusalem
T he inner world was as real to Blake as the
outer land of waking life. He looked upon his
dreams and visions as the realities of the forms of
nature. Blake reduced everything to the bedrock of
his own consciousness.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
Luke 17:21
60
Awakened Imagination
The Real Man, the Imaginative Man, has in-
vested the outer world with all of its properties.
The apparent reality of the outer world which is so
hard to dissolve is only proof of the absolute real-
ity of the inner world of his own imagination.
No man can come to me, except the
Father which hath sent me draw him: . . .
I and my Father are one.
John 6:44; 10:30
The world which is described from observation
is a manifestation of the mental activity of the
observer. When man discovers that his world is his
own mental activity made visible, that no man can
come unto him except he draws him, and that
there is no one to change but himself, his own
imaginative self, his first impulse is to reshape the
world in the image of his ideal. But his ideal is not
so easily incarnated. In that moment when he
ceases to conform to external discipline, he must
impose upon himself a far more rigorous discipline,
the self-discipline upon which the realization of his
ideal depends.
Imagination is not entirely untrammelled and
free to move at will without any rules to constrain
it. In fact, the contrary is true. Imagination travels
according to habit. Imagination has choice, but it
It Is Within
61
chooses according to habit. Awake or asleep, man’s
imagination is constrained to follow certain definite
patterns. It is this benumbing influence of habit
that man must change; if he does not, his dreams
will fade under the paralysis of custom.
Imagination, which is Christ in man, is not sub-
ject to the necessity to produce only that which is
perfect and good. It exercises its absolute freedom
from necessity by endowing the outer physical self
with free will to choose to follow good or evil, order
or disorder.
Choose this day whom ye will serve.
Joshua 24:15
But after the choice is made and accepted so that
it forms the individual’s habitual consciousness,
then imagination manifests its infinite power and
wisdom by moulding the outer sensuous world of
becoming in the image of the habitual inner speech
and actions of the individual.
To realize his ideal, man must first change the
pattern which his imagination has followed.
Habitual thought is indicative of character. The
way to change the outer world is to make the inner
speech and action match the outer speech and
action of fulfilled desire.
Our ideals are waiting to be incarnated, but
62
Awakened Imagination
unless we ourselves match our inner speech and
action to the speech and action of fulfilled desire,
they are incapable of birth. Inner speech and ac-
tion are the channels of God’s action. He cannot
respond to our prayer unless these paths are of-
fered. The outer behaviour of man is mechanical.
It is subject to the compulsion applied to it by the
behaviour of the inner self, and old habits of the
inner self hang on till replaced by new ones. It is a
peculiar property of the second or inner man that
he gives to the outer self something similar to his
own reality of being. Any change in the behaviour
of the inner self will result in corresponding outer
changes.
The mystic calls a change of consciousness
“death.” By death he means, not the destruction of
imagination and the state with which it was fused,
but the dissolution of their union. Fusion is union
rather than oneness. Thus the conditions to which
that union gave being vanish. “I die daily,” said
Paul to the Corinthians. Blake said to his friend
Crabbe Robinson:
There is nothing like death. Death is the
best thing that can happen in life; but
most people die so late and take such an
unmerciful time in dying. God knows,
It Is Within
63
their neighbors never see them rise from
the dead.
To the outer man of sense, who knows nothing of
the inner man of Being, this is sheer nonsense. But
Blake made the above quite clear when he wrote in
the year before he died:
William Blake — one who is very much
delighted with being in good company.
Born 28 November 1757 in London and
has died several times since.
When man has the sense of Christ as his imagi-
nation, he sees why Christ must die and rise again
from the dead to save man — why he must detach
his imagination from his present state and match
it to a higher concept of himself if he would rise
above his present limitations and thereby save
himself.
Here is a lovely story of a mystical death which
was witnessed by a “neighbor.” “Last week,” writes
the one “who rose from the dead,” “a friend offered
me her home in the mountains for the Christmas
holidays as she thought she might go east. She said
that she would let me know this week. We had a
very pleasant conversation and I mentioned you
64
Awakened Imagination
and your teaching in connection with a discussion
of Dunne’s ‘Experiment With Time’ which she had
been reading.
“Her letter arrived Monday. As I picked it up I
had a sudden sense of depression. However, when
I read it she said I could have the house and told
me where to get the keys. Instead of being cheer-
ful I grew still more depressed, so much so I
decided there must have been something between
the lines which I was getting untuitively. I unfolded
the letter and read the first page through and as I
turned to the second page, I noticed she had writ-
ten a postscript on the back of the first sheet. It
consisted of an extremely blunt and heavy-handed
description of an unlovely trait in my character
which I had struggled for years to overcome, and
for the past two years I thought I had succeeded.
Yet here it was again, described with clinical ex-
actitude.
“I was stunned and desolated. I thought to
myself, ‘What is this letter trying to tell me? In the
first place she invited me to use her house as I have
been seeing myself in some lovely home during the
holidays. In the second place, nothing comes to me
except I draw it. And thirdly I have been hearing
nothing but good news. So the obvious conclusion
is that something in me corresponds to this letter
and no matter what it looks like it is good news.’
It Is Within
65
“I reread the letter and as I did so I asked, ‘What
is there here for me to see?’ And then I saw. It
started out ‘After our conversation of last week I
feel I can tell you . . .’ and the rest of the page was
as studded with ‘weres’ and ‘wases’ as currants in a
seed cake. A great feeling of elation swept over me.
It was all in the past. The thing I had labored so
long to correct was done. I suddenly realized that
my friend was a witness to my resurrection. I
whirled around the studio chanting ‘It’s all in the
past! It is done. Thank you, it is done!’ I gathered
all my gratitude up in a big ball of light and shot
it straight to you and if you saw a flash of lightning
Monday evening shortly after six your time, that
was it.
“Now, instead of writing a polite letter because
it is the correct thing to do, I can write giving sin-
cere thanks for her frankness and thanking her for
the loan of her house. Thank you so much for your
teaching which has made my beloved imagination
truly my Saviour.”
And now, if any man shall say unto her
Lo, here is Christ, or there,
she will believe it not, for she knows that the King-
dom of God is within her and that she herself must
assume full responsibility for the incarnation of her
66
Awakened Imagination
ideal and that nothing but death and resurrection
will bring her to it. She has found her Saviour, her
beloved Imagination, forever expanding in the
bosom of God.
There is only one reality, and that is Christ —
Human Imagination, the inheritance and final
achievement of the whole of Humanity
That we . . . speaking the truth in love,
may grow up into him in all things, which
is the head, even Christ.
Ephesians 4:14, 15
Chapter Seven
CREATION IS FINISHED
I am the beginning and the end, there is
nothing to come that has not been, and is.
Ecclesiastes 3:15 ERV
B lake saw all possible human situations as
“already-made” states. He saw every aspect,
every plot and drama as already worked out as
“mere possibilities” as long as we are not in them,
but as overpowering realities when we are in them.
He described these states as “Sculptures of Los’s
Halls.”
Distinguish therefore states from Indi-
viduals in those States. States change but
Individual Identities never change nor
cease. . . . The Imagination is not a State.
Said Blake,
68
Awakened Imagination
Creation Is Finished
69
It is the Human Existence itself. Affection
or Love becomes a State when divided
from imagination.
Just how important this is to remember is almost
impossible to say, but the moment the individual
realizes this for the first time is the most momentous
in his life, and to be encouraged to feel this is the
highest form of encouragement it is possible to give.
This truth is common to all men, but the con-
sciousness of it — and much more, the self-con-
sciousness of it — is another matter.
The day I realized this great truth — that every-
thing in my world is a manifestation of the mental
activity which goes on within me, and that the con-
ditions and circumstances of my life only reflect the
state of consciousness with which I am fused — is the
most momentous in my life. But the experience
that brought me to this certainty is so remote from
ordinary existence I have long hesitated to tell it,
for my reason refused to admit the conclusions to
which the experience impelled me. Nevertheless,
this experience revealed to me that I am supreme
within the circle of my own state of consciousness
and that it is the state with which I am identified
that determines what I experience. Therefore it
should be shared with all, for to know this is to
become free from the world’s greatest tyranny, the
belief in a second cause.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they
shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
Blessed are they whose imagination has been so
purged of the beliefs in second causes they know
that imagination is all, and all is imagination.
One day I quietly slipped from my apartment in
New York City into some remote yesteryear’s coun-
tryside. As I entered the dining room of a large inn,
I became fully conscious. I knew that my physical
body was immobilized on my bed back in New
York City. Yet here I was as awake and as conscious
as I have ever been. I intuitively knew that if I could
stop the activity of my mind, everything before me
would freeze. No sooner was the thought born than
the urge to try it possessed me. I felt my head
tighten, then thicken to a stillness. My attention
concentrated into a crystal-clear focus, and the
waitress walking, walked not. And I looked through
the window and the leaves falling, fell not. And the
family of four eating, ate not. And they lifting the
food, lifted it not. Then my attention relaxed, the
tightness eased, and of a sudden all moved onward
70
71
Awakened Imagination
in their course. The leaves fell, the waitress walked,
and the family ate. Then I understood Blake’s
vision of the “Sculptures of Los’s Halls.”
I sent you to reap that whereon ye be-
stowed no labor.
John 4:38
Creation is finished.
I am the beginning and the end, there is
nothing to come that has not been, and is.
Ecclesiastes 3:15, ERV
The world of creation is finished and its original is
within us. We saw it before we set forth, and have
since been trying to remember it and to activate
sections of it. There are infinite views of it. Our task
is to get the right view and by determined direction
of our attention make it pass in procession before
the inner eye. If we assemble the right sequence
and experience it in imagination until it has the
tone of reality, then we consciously create circum-
stances. This inner procession is the activity of
imagination that must be consciously directed. We,
by a series of mental transformations, become
aware of increasing portions of that which already
is, and by matching our own mental activity to that
Creation Is Finished
portion of creation which we desire to experience,
we activate it, resurrect it, and give it life.
This experience of mine not only shows the world
as a manifestation of the mental activity of the
individual observer, but it also reveals our course
of time as jumps of attention between eternal
moments. An infinite abyss separates any two
moments of ours. We, by the movements of our
attention, give life to the “Sculptures of Los’s
Halls.”
Think of the world as containing an infinite
number of states of consciousness from which it
could be viewed. Think of these states as rooms or
mansions in the House of God, and like the rooms
of any house they are fixed relative to one another.
But think of yourself, the Real Self, the Imagina-
tive You, as the living, moving occupant of God’s
House. Each room contains some of Los’s Sculp-
tures, with infinite plots and dramas and situations
already worked out but not activated. They are
activated as soon as Human Imagination enters
and fuses with them. Each represents certain mem-
tal and emotional activities. To enter a state, man
must consent to the ideas and feelings which it
represents. These states represent an infinite num-
ber of possible mental transformations which man
can experience. To move into another state or
mansion necessitates a change of beliefs. All that
.
72 Awakened Imagination
you could ever desire is already present and only
waits to be matched by your beliefs. But it must be
matched, for that is the necessary condition by
which alone it can be activated and objectified.
Matching the beliefs of a state is the seeking that
finds, the knocking to which it is opened, the ask-
ing that receives. Go in and possess the land.
The moment man matches the beliefs of any
state he fuses with it, and this union results in the
activation and projection of its plots, plans,
dramas, and situations. It becomes the individ-
ual’s home from which he views the world. It is
his workshop, and, if he is observant, he will see
outer reality shaping itself upon the model of his
imagination.
It is for this purpose of training us in image-
making that we were made subject to the limita-
tions of the senses and clothed in bodies of flesh. It
is the awakening of the imagination, the returning
of His Son, that our Father waits for.
The creature was made subject to vanity
not willingly but by reason of Him who
subjected it.
Romans 8:20
But the victory of the Son, the return of the prod-
igal, assures us that
Creation Is Finished 73
the creature shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the Sons of God.
Romans 8:21
We were subjected to this biological experience
because no one can know of imagination who has
not been subjected to the vanities and limitations
of the flesh, who has not taken his share of Sonship
and gone prodigal, who has not experimented and
tasted this cup of experience; and confusion will
continue until man awakes and a fundamentally
imaginative view of life has been reestablished and
acknowledged as basic.
I should preach . . . the unsearchable
riches of Christ and make all men see
what is the fellowship of the mystery,
which from the beginning of the world has
been hid in God, who created all things by
Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 3:8, 9
Bear in mind that Christ in you is your imagi-
nation.
As the appearance of our world is determined by
the particular state with which we are fused, so may
we determine our fate as individuals by fusing our
74
Awakened Imagination
Creation Is Finished
75
imaginations with ideals we seek to realize. On the
distinction between our states of consciousness
depends the distinction between the circumstances
and conditions of our lives. Man, who is free in his
choice of state, often cries out to be saved from the
state of his choice.
And ye shall cry out in that day because of
your king which ye shall have chosen you;
and the Lord will not hear you in that
day. Nevertheless the people refused to
obey the voice of Samuel; and they said,
Nay; but we will have a king over us.
1 Samuel 8:18, 19
Choose wisely the state that you will serve. All states
are lifeless until imagination fuses with them.
All things when they are admitted are
made manifest by the light: for everything
that is made manifest is light.
Ephesians 5:13
and
Ye are the light of the world,
Matthew 5:14
by which those ideas to which you have consented
are made manifest.
Hold fast to your ideal. Nothing can take it from
you but your imagination. Don’t think of your
ideal, think/rom it. It is only the ideals from which
you think that are ever realized.
Man lives not by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God.
Matthew 4:4
and “the mouth of God” is the mind of man.
Become a drinker and an eater of the ideals you
wish to realize. Have a set, definite aim or your
mind will wander, and wandering it eats every
negative suggestion. If you live right mentally,
everything else will be right. By a change of men-
tal diet you can alter the course of observed events.
But unless there is a change of mental diet, your
personal history remains the same. You illuminate
or darken your life by the ideas to which you con-
sent. Nothing is more important to you than the
ideas on which you feed. And you feed on the ideas
from which you think. If you find the world
unchanged, it is a sure sign that you are wanting in
fidelity to the new mental diet, which you neglect
J
76
A wakened Imagination
Creation Is Finished
77
in order to condemn your environment. You are in
need of a new and sustained attitude. You can be
anything you please if you will make the conception
habitual, for any idea which excludes all others
from the field of attention discharges in action.
The ideas and moods to which you constantly
return define the state with which you are fused.
Therefore train yourself to occupy more frequently
the feeling of your wish fulfilled. This is creative
magic. It is the way to work toward fusion with the
desired state.
If you would assume the feeling of your wish ful-
filled more frequently, you would be master of your
fate, but unfortunately you shut out your assump-
tion for all but the occasional hour. Practice mak-
ing real to yourself the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
After you have assumed the feeling of the wish ful-
filled, do not close the experience as you would a
book, but carry it around like a fragrant odor.
Instead of being completely forgotten, let it remain
in the atmosphere communicating its influence
automatically to your actions and reactions. A
mood, often repeated, gains a momentum that is
hard to break or check. So be careful of the feelings
you entertain. Habitual moods reveal the state with
which you are fused.
It is always possible to pass from thinking of the
end you desire to realize, to thinking/rom the end.
But the crucial matter is thinking/rom the end, for
thinking/rom means unification or fusion with the
idea: whereas in thinking of the end there is always
subject and object — the thinking individual and
the thing thought. You must imagine yourself into
the state of your wish fulfilled, in your love for that
state, and in so doing live and think from it and no
more of it. You pass from thinking of to thinking
from by centering your imagination in the feeling
of the wish fulfilled.
Chapter Eight
THE APPLE OF GOD’S EYE
What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is
He?
Matthew 22:42
W hen this question is asked of you, let your
answer be, “Christ is my imagination,” and,
though I
See not yet all things put under him,
Hebrews 2:8
yet I know that I am Mary from whom sooner or
later He shall be born, and eventually
Do all things through Christ.
The birth of Christ is the awakening of the inner
or Second man. It is becoming conscious of the
80
Awakened Imagination
The Apple of God’s Eye
81
mental activity within oneself, which activity con-
tinues whether we are conscious of it or not.
The birth of Christ does not bring any person
from a distance, or make anything to be that was
not there before. It is the unveiling of the Son of
God in man. The Lord “cometh in clouds” is the
prophet’s description of the pulsating rings of
golden liquid light on the head of him in whom He
awakes. The coming is from within and not from
without, as Christ is in us.
This great mystery
God was manifest in the flesh
begins with Advent, and it is appropriate that the
cleansing of the Temple,
Which temple ye are,
1 Corinthians 3:17
stands in the forefront of the Christian mysteries.
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
Luke 17:21
Advent is unveiling the mystery of your being. If
you will practice the art of revision by a life lived
according to the wise, imaginative use of your inner
speech and inner actions, in confidence that by the
conscious use of “the power that worketh in us,”
Christ will awake in you; if you believe it, trust it,
act upon it; Christ will awake in you. This is
Advent.
Great is the mystery, God was manifest in
the flesh.
1 Timothy 3:16
From Advent on,
He that toucheth you toucheth the apple
of God’s eye.
Zechariah 2:8
THE
SEARCH
To Victoria
the fulfillment of a dream
THE SEARCH
O nce in an idle interval at sea, I meditated on
“the perfect state,” and wondered what I
would be, were I of too pure eyes to behold iniq-
uity, if to me all things were pure and were I
without condemnation. As I became lost in this
fiery brooding, I found myself lifted above the dark
environment of the senses. So intense was the feel-
ing, I felt myself a being of fire dwelling in a body
of air. Voices as from a heavenly chorus, with the
exaltation of those who had been conquerors in a
conflict with death, were singing “He is risen — He
is risen,” and intuitively I knew they meant me.
Then I seemed to be walking in the night. I soon
came upon a scene that might have been the
ancient Pool of Bethesda, for in this place lay a
great multitude of impotent folk — blind, halt,
withered — waiting not for the moving of the water
as of tradition, but waiting for me. As I came near,
without thought or effort on my part they were,
86
The Search
The Search
87
one after the other, molded as by the Magician of
the Beautiful. Eyes, hands, feet — all missing mem-
bers— were drawn from some invisible reservoir and
molded in harmony with that perfection which I
felt springing within me. When all were made per-
fect, the chorus exulted “It is finished.” Then the
scene dissolved and I awoke.
I know this vision was the result of my intense
meditation upon the idea of perfection, for my
meditations invariably bring about union with the
state contemplated. I had been so completely ab-
sorbed within the idea that for a while I had
become what I contemplated, and the high pur-
pose with which I had for that moment identified
myself drew the companionship of high things and
fashioned the vision in harmony with my inner
nature. The ideal with which we are united works
by association of ideas to awaken a thousand moods
to create a drama in keeping with the central idea.
I first discovered this close relationship of moods
to vision when I was aged about seven. I became
aware of a mysterious life quickening within me like
a stormy ocean of frightening might. I always knew
when I would be united with this hidden identity,
for my senses were expectant on the nights of these
visitations and I knew beyond all doubt that before
morning I would be alone with immensity. I so
dreaded these visitations that I would lie awake
until my eyes from sheer exhaustion closed. As my
eyes closed in sleep, I was no longer solitary but
smitten through and through with another being,
and yet I knew it to be myself. It seemed older than
life, yet nearer to me than my boyhood. If I tell
what I discovered on these nights, I do so not to
impose my ideas on others but that I may give hope
to those who seek the law of life.
I discovered that my expectant mood worked as
a magnet to unite me with this Greater Me, while
my fears made It appear as a stormy sea. As a boy,
I conceived of this mysterious self as might, and in
my union with It I felt its majesty as a stormy sea
which drenched me, then rolled and tossed me as
a helpless wave.
As a man I conceived of It as love and myself the
son of It, and in my union with It, now, what a love
enfolds me! It is a mirror to all. Whatever we con-
ceive It as being, that It is to us. I believe It to be
the center through which all the threads of the
universe are drawn; therefore I have altered my
values and changed my ideas so that they now
depend upon and are in harmony with this sole
cause of all that is. It is to me that changeless real-
ity which fashions circumstances in harmony with
our concepts of ourselves.
My mystical experiences have convinced me that
there is no way to bring about the outer perfection
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we seek other than by the transformation of our-
selves. As soon as we succeed in transforming our-
selves, the world will melt magically before our eyes
and reshape itself in harmony with that which our
transformation affirms.
Two other visions I will tell because they bear out
the truth of my assertion that we, by intensity of
love and hate, become what we contemplate.
Once, with closed eyes made radiant from
brooding, I meditated on the eternal question,
“Who Am I?” and felt myself gradually dissolve
into a shoreless sea of vibrant light, imagination
passing beyond all fear of death. In this state noth-
ing existed but myself, a boundless ocean of liquid
light. Never have I felt more intimate with Being.
How long this experience lasted I do not know, but
my return to earth was accompanied by a distinct
feeling of crystallizing again into human shape.
At another time, I lay on my bed and with my
eyes shut as in sleep I brooded on the mystery of
Buddha. In a little while the dark caverns of my
brain began to grow luminous. I seemed to be sur-
rounded by luminous clouds which emanated from
my head as fiery, pulsating rings. I saw nothing but
these luminous rings for a time. Then there ap-
peared before my eyes a rock of quartz crystal.
While I gazed upon it, the crystal broke into pieces
which invisible hands quickly shaped into the liv-
ing Buddha. As I looked on this meditative figure,
I saw that it was myself. I was the living Buddha
whom I contemplated. A light like the sun glowed
from this living image of myself with increasing
intensity until it exploded. Then the light gradu-
ally faded and once more I was back within the
blackness of my room.
Out of what sphere or treasury of design came
this being mightier than human, his garments, the
crystal, the light? If I saw, heard, and moved in a
world of real beings when I seemed to myself to be
walking in the night, when the lame, the halt, the
blind were transformed in harmony with my inner
nature, then I am justified in assuming that I have
a more subtile body than the physical, a body that
can be detached from the physical and used in
other spheres; for to see, to hear, to move are func-
tions of an organism however ethereal. If I brood
over the alternative that my psychic experiences
were self-begotten fantasy, no less am I moved to
wonder at this mightier self who flashes on my
mind a drama as real as those I experience when I
am fully awake.
On these fiery meditations I have entered again
and again, and I know beyond all doubt that both
assumptions are true. Housed within this form of
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earth is a body attuned to a world of light, and I
have, by intense meditation, lifted it as with a mag-
net through the skull of this dark house of flesh.
The first time I awoke the fires within me I thought
my head would explode. There was intense vibra-
tion at the base of my skull, then sudden oblivion
of all. Then I found myself clothed in a garment of
light and attached by a silvery elastic cord to the
slumbering body on the bed. So exalted were my
feelings, I felt related to the stars. In this garment
I roamed spheres more familiar than earth, but
found that, as on earth, conditions were molded in
harmony with my nature. “Self-begotten fantasy,”
I hear you say. No more so than the things of earth.
I am an immortal being conceiving myself as man
and forming worlds in the likeness and image of my
concept of self.
What we imagine, that we are. By our imagina-
tion we have created this dream of life, and by our
imagination we will re-enter that eternal world of
light, becoming that which we were before we
imagined the world. In the divine economy noth-
ing is lost. We cannot lose anything save by descent
from the sphere where the thing has its natural life.
There is no transforming power in death and,
whether we are here or there, we fashion the world
that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagina-
tion and feeling, and we illuminate or darken our
lives by the concepts we hold of ourselves. Nothing
is more important to us than our conception of our-
selves, and especially is this true of our concept of
the deep, hidden One within us.
Those that help or hinder us, whether they know
it or not, are the servants of that law which shapes
outward circumstances in harmony with our inner
nature. It is our conception of ourselves which frees
or constrains us, though it may use material agen-
cies to achieve its purpose.
Because life molds the outer world to reflect the
inner arrangement of our minds, there is no way of
bringing about the outer perfection we seek other
than by the transformation of ourselves. No help
cometh from without; the hills to which we lift our
eyes are those of an inner range. It is thus to our
own consciousness that we must turn as to the only
reality, the only foundation on which all phenom-
ena can be explained. We can rely absolutely on
the justice of this law to give us only that which is
of the nature of ourselves.
To attempt to change the world before we
change our concept of ourselves is to struggle
against the nature of things. There can be no outer
change until there is first an inner change. As
within, so without. I am not advocating philosophi-
cal indifference when I suggest that we should
imagine ourselves as already that which we want to
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be, living in a mental atmosphere of greatness,
rather than using physical means and arguments to
bring about the desired change. Everything we do,
unaccompanied by a change of consciousness, is
but futile readjustment of surfaces. However we toil
or struggle, we can receive no more than our sub-
conscious assumptions affirm. To protest against
anything which happens to us is to protest against
the law of our being and our rulership over our own
destiny.
The circumstances of my life are too closely
related to my conception of myself not to have been
launched by my own spirit from some magical
storehouse of my being. If there is pain to me in
these happenings, I should look within myself for
the cause, for I am moved here and there and
made to live in a world in harmony with my con-
cept of myself.
Intense meditation brings about a union with the
state contemplated, and during this union we see
visions, have experiences, and behave in keeping
with our change of consciousness. This shows us
that a transformation of consciousness will result in
a change of environment and behavior. However,
our ordinary alterations of consciousness, as we pass
from one state to another, are not transformations,
because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by
another in the reverse direction; but whenever one
state grows so stable as to definitely expel its rivals,
then that central habitual state defines the charac-
ter and is a true transformation. To say that we are
transformed means that ideas previously peripheral
in our consciousness now take a central place and
form the habitual center of our energy.
All wars prove that violent emotions are ex-
tremely potent in precipitating mental rearrange-
ments. Every great conflict has been followed by an
era of materialism and greed in which the ideals
for which the conflict ostensibly was waged are
submerged. This is inevitable because war evokes
hate, which impels a descent in consciousness from
the plane of the ideal to the level where the con-
flict is waged. If we would become as emotionally
aroused over our ideals as we become over our dis-
likes, we would ascend to the plane of our ideals as
easily as we now descend to the level of our hates.
Love and hate have a magical transforming
power, and we grow through their exercise into the
likeness of what we contemplate. By intensity of
hatred we create in ourselves the character we
imagine in our enemies. Qualities die for want of
attention, so the unlovely states might best be
rubbed out by imagining “beauty for ashes and joy
for mourning” rather than by direct attacks on the
state from which we would be free. “Whatsoever
things are lovely and of good report, think on these
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things,” for we become that with which we are en
rapport.
There is nothing to change but our concept of
self. Humanity is a single being in spite of its many
forms and faces, and there is in it only such seem-
ing separation as we find in our own being when we
are dreaming. The pictures and circumstances we
see in dreams are creations of our own imagination
and have no existence save in ourselves. The same
is true of the pictures and circumstances we see in
this dream of life. They reveal our concepts of our-
selves. As soon as we succeed in transforming self,
our world will dissolve and reshape itself in har-
mony with that which our change affirms.
The universe which we study with such care is a
dream, and we the dreamers of the dream, eternal
dreamers dreaming noneternal dreams. One day,
like Nebuchadnezzar we shall awaken from the
dream, from the nightmare in which we fought
with demons, to find that we really never left our
eternal home; that we were never born and have
never died save in our dream.
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